With the implementation of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies into military shipboard environments, commercial non-water-blocked cables are sometimes utilized because equivalent water-blocked military cable designs do not exist. A major reason for the lack of compatible, water-blocked military cables is the lengthy development process required to produce a Qualified Product List (QPL) approved cable possessing the physical, mechanical, chemical, and environmental properties necessary to endure the rigors of the shipboard environment, while also maintaining the electrical and/or optical requirements of the COTS interface.
An additional reason for employing commercial non-water-blocked cables in the military shipboard environment is the need to maintain certain critical electrical parameters of the copper conductors, such as propagation delay and/or dielectric constant, which can be affected by the introduction of the materials and compounds necessary to water-block electrical signal type cable. Furthermore, military system designers who implement the latest COTS technologies into their designs typically fail to consider the shipboard cabling infrastructure until it is too late, thus leaving insufficient time to test and approve a QPL solution to support the COTS interface(s). Consequently, military requirements for using QPL approved water-blocked cables for inter-compartmental cable runs transitioning watertight decks or bulkheads below the V-line of a ship are waived, and commercial non-water-blocked cables are used.
The problem of water-blocking a non-water-blocked cable has been previously addressed with a lengthy, labor intensive manual procedure that is invasive to the cable design because a length of the outer jacket of the cable is removed from both ends of the cable and the internal cable subcomponents are exposed for applying a water-blocking compound. Following this, the environmental integrity of the cable ends need to be reestablished, which involves re-closing the cable via application of additional water-blocking compound and recovery of heat shrinkable tubing (shrinking of the tubing back to its original dimensions via the application of heat) to complete the water-blocking process. The opportunity for disturbing the cable subcomponent (i.e., electrical and/or optical conductor) lay and hence, the electrical and/or optical properties of the conductors and shield(s), is ever-present with this method.
Accordingly, an improved method is needed for water-blocking non-water-blocked cable while preserving the original physical and mechanical properties of the cable, as well as the electrical and/or optical connectivity and integrity of the cable conductors and shields.